In Drug Court, some find a way out of the lifestyle

WEST CHESTER – On an afternoon in September, Common Pleas Court Judge Phyllis Streitel looked out over her Courtroom 14, the benches crowded with young and middle aged faces. Her focus, however, was on one 20-ish man.

“It’s a nice day today, isn’t it?” the judge said, addressing the man. “That’s because we have a graduation today. You have come a long way, and I know you are proud of yourself. You must be. And I am very proud of you.”

The young man that Streitel was speaking to was graduating that day from one phase of Chester County’s Drug Court program to another, on his way to ultimately winning discharge from oversight by the county’s court system but, more importantly, relief from the habit of drug abuse that landed him hot water with the criminal justice system in the first place.

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“The way I did it was to just stay focused,” said the man, whose name is being withheld. “I did not want to go back to the same lifestyle I was living.”

He had been in the program for two years, and had suffered his own setbacks during that time. The probation officer who oversaw his case said, however, he had been able to transform himself into a law-abiding, productive and clean citizen. “It’s been a real pleasure to get to know him,” she said.

“It wasn’t easy,” the young man admitted, speaking to the rest of the people in the courtroom, many of whom could probably empathize with his situation. “I’ve worked the hardest that I’ve ever worked.”

His efforts have paid off: He can now afford a car and an apartment.

But that day in Drug Court was not all sunshine and roses. A few minutes after Streitel presented the graduating young man with a token of his success that read “serenity,” she was ordering a not-so-lucky participant in the program to be led away to Chester County Prison for testing positive for morphine.

“We have worked with you as much as we can,” Streitel told the defendant, who had been in and out of rehab and broken the program’s strict rules before. “But this is a program that is as good as the people who take it seriously.”

Drug Court has been part of the county’s treatment court diversionary efforts since 1997, among the first such programs in the nation. Over the years, it has proven successful at a number of goals, including cutting down on the number of prison inmates who are held for drug-related crimes – whether possession itself or offenses associated with getting money to buy drugs. But it has also helped drug and alcohol abusers find their way out of the fog of their addiction.

According to figures provided by the county’s Adult Probation Office, which organizes the program and oversees individual participants, 922 defendants have graduated from the program between November 1997 and September 2012, out of 1,843 who were accepted. That saved an estimated $1.4 million in prison costs.

In a 2001 study, drug court participants in the county had a re-arrest rate of 5.4 percent, versus 21.5 percent among a control group. As of 2010, 98 percent of those graduated were either employed or in school.

Streitel is the third judge presiding over the cases in treatment court, following Judge Jacqueline Carroll Cody and Judge William Mahon. She began working with the program in early 2011 after years of handling criminal cases involving many defendants who were struggling with addiction.

Streitel, in an interview in October, said that what struck her as she became more involved in Drug Court was the overwhelming desire of most of those involved to kick their addictions. “They are desperate to overcome their problems,” she said.

In essays they write about themselves that are part of the on-going learning process, many express family motivation as the reason for their work toward sobriety.

“They talk about earning their family’s respect,” she said. “When they slip up (and use again), they look devastated. But part of our process is teaching them how to pick themselves up.”

The drug court model is one of intense supervision by probation and bail officers; in-or-out patient counseling; and near-constant oversight by the judge who has the power to pass them through the program – at which time they can erase their criminal record they otherwise would have received – or remove them and send them back to trial court.

Streitel said she recognized that the presence of a judge as an authority figure in their lives is a strong one for many of the participants, who may have defied friends or family in continuing to use drugs. They seem dependant to a degree on winning the approval of the judge by conforming with the program, she said.

“Interacting with a judge really works. It is very moving, the whole process. But it an onerous process, and a lot of people don’t make it,” she said, adding that, for some, failure is fatal.

In 2012, one young man who seemed to be successfully navigating his way through the program died of a heroin overdose, months after he had gotten clean. Streitel said she believed that his body had grown unable to consume the amount of heroin he was used to, and what would have been a normal dose killed him. She thought of Garrett Reid, former Eagles’ coach Andy Reid’s son, when speaking of the situation.

“Sometimes they do not know how to untangle the web they are in” she said.